Ok I havent seen a topic on this, mods if I am mistaken please post links. Also if this is in the wrong area please move.

Any way, how does one go about this without damageing the figure. I have a couple that need to come appart for various reasons. Also I have a couple arms in torso's that had hands broken off in them whats the best way to get the broken piece out.

If you gently pull the arms away from the torso, they will pop out without much force or breaking.

If the hand is broken off flush with the end of the arm, you are probably out of luck without a drill. If there's at least a bit to grab onto, a pair of tweezers would be the tool of choice.

I have a collection of arms and hands that I bought off eBay many years ago that I use to repair minifigs (or swap out hands for more interesting colors, or back to yellow if I don't want the more interesting color). It's amazing how many I got that fit into a little 3"x5"x3/4" fishing tackle box.

You can also disassemble legs pretty easily, the legs will pull off the hips without too much force.

I've never taken legs off individually before, but with a little force hands and arms will easily come free. Sometimes they are a bit loose when I put them back on, but I don't know if this is because of the disassembly or not.

Newer torsos seem to be less prone to cracking than old ones. I don't know if that is because the plastic becomes more brittle over time, or if it is because they changed the formula or torso design. Just keep in mind that with old parts, the arms and torso are much more prone to crack. If the arms don't pop out easily on an old fig, it's probably best just to leave them on.

With newer figs, just rotate the arm so that it is sticking straight forward or straight backward and pop it out. Very simple

Legs can be popped off of the hips, but sometimes they are very tight. Pulling on the leg just enough to open a small gap between the hip and the leg will allow you to get a hobby screwdriver in there to pop them off no problem.

Here is a help page with a link to a video by a former (current?) Classic Castle member

That's a great little video by James. I'll link it from the how-to page.

I alluded to this over in your SW fig thread, but I find arm swapping to be great for giving some variety. For instance, I had a bunch of the old SW Jedi torsos which work great as peasants, but they get a little repetitive. So by swapping out the arms I got some variety:

Another good use is to help get a consistent color scheme for your army. Say you have a Black Falcon army - basic blue/black color scheme:Now you want to increase your ranks, and you've got a bunch of these two figs.Those are good generic torsos, but unfortunately, if you mix together those three types of figs, they won't look like a single army. So you swap out the arms for either blue or black, same with the legs, and give them consistent headgear, and suddenly you've got a consolidated force.